Many facilities use vehicles for conveying items to different locations within a facility. There are a variety of different types of vehicles that are used. For example, manually controlled vehicles, such as hand trucks and peddled vehicles; motorized driven vehicles, such as operator driven carts and forklifts; and operatorless vehicles, such as tow line carts (i.e., carts pulled to various locations with an above-ground or below-ground tow line.)
Many of these conventional vehicles require items to be manually placed on and removed from the vehicle. Also, especially with respect to operatorless vehicles, existing vehicles tend to be “off the shelf” and, thus, suited for many uses. Such vehicles tend to be bulky and, hence, difficult to store. Also, while there are some systems available for assisting in the removal of items from conventional carts, such systems are generally cumbersome and can result in damage to the goods unless properly controlled. Also, such systems cannot readily remove larger items, such as pallets, from carts. Hence, a forklift remains the single most conventional way for removing items from a cart.
A need, therefore, exists for an improved low profile cart and system for controlling removal of items contained on such a cart.